Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2025 i Car and Driver

MERCEDES-BENZ’S W123 GENERATION of mid-size models are a bit like Clark Kent before he dons the red cape: a tad dweeby but seemingly indestructible. But like the Man of Steel, the W123 has one weakness, and it’s not a green mineral from Krypton but the unctuous and sophisticated self-leveling dampers fit to the rear of 1979–85 300TD wagons. The hydraulically operated setup eventually fails, leaving the W123 longroof’s rear sagging worse than the poorly tailored khakis of the bespectacled Daily Planet reporter from Smallville. Sadly, the necessary replacement parts are no longer in production, so reraising and retaining the wagon’s hind dampers is a seemingly hopeless endeavor. Fortunately for obsessive wagonistas, 38-year-old vintage-Benz fanatic Andrew Villaseñor has created a cottage industry in central California, where he rebuilds about 20 seeping…

*INCLUDES PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING OPTIONS. FOR ONE WEEK EACH YEAR, we descend on a piece of hilly automotive heaven in southern Virginia to see how quickly a selection of cars can lap a racetrack—the test we call Lightning Lap. The Grand Course at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) is the closest facsimile of the Nürburgring Nordschleife we can find without flying over an ocean. The 4.1-mile course may not be as long as that German one, but it is every bit as demanding. This is our 18th installment, and the rules are slightly more structured than Can-Am’s run-whatcha-brung rulebook. Slightly. Regular spots in the Lightning Lap run groups are reserved for unmodified production cars—vehicles you could conceivably purchase at your local dealer. Classes are formed by vehicle price. We’ve lapped family sedans and…

THE REVUELTO IS NAMED FOR A SPANISH bull with a rebellious streak, but this new Lamborghini is more than rebellious—it’s revolutionary. Its closest sibling is the Aventador it replaces because they both have a V-12 engine, but the similarity begins and ends there. With no turbochargers, the sound of the mighty 6.5-liter V-12 is as glorious as ever. Much of it breathes better, from the reworked air intake to a compression ratio that’s been jacked up from 11.8:1 to 12.6:1 and finally to an exhaust that flows better at high revs. How high are those revs? The redline is now a mind-boggling 9400 rpm, and peak output is 814 horsepower at a scorching 9250 rpm, some 45 horses and 750 revs more than the exiting Aventador Ultimae. Oh, and the…

Here’s one trend the automotive prognosticators didn’t see coming: the humble hybrid’s comeback. In 2024, sales of conventional hybrids—the ones you don’t plug in—shot up nearly 37 percent from 2023, according to the automotive analysis firm Wards Intelligence, while sales of electric vehicles rose just 7 percent. Proof that hybrids have become so well understood, so well accepted, and so commonplace is that all 2025 Toyota Camrys are hybrids, and the top four of the Honda Accord’s six trims went hybrid-only in 2023. When popular mainstream family cars like these—the Camry was the eighth-bestselling vehicle in the U.S. in 2024—have gas-electric propulsion as standard, you know hybrids have become the new normal. To see what upsides—and downsides—exist in the realm of hybrid-only sedans, we paired an all-wheel-drive Camry XLE and…

NISSAN’S MID-SIZE SUV was getting old, almost old enough to need an annual tailpipe inspection. Among a crop of competitive fresh faces, the third-generation Murano had gone stale. Now, after Nissan refreshed or redid nearly every other major player in its lineup, the Murano finally gets its day. The fourth-generation Murano is more of a major refresh than an all-new vehicle. Under-neath its shapely new sheetmetal, distinct lighting elements, swooping roofline, and bulging fenders lie structure and chassis components from the outgoing model—and that’s fine. The Murano’s sleek and clean design conceals those historic elements. Though the wheelbase and overall length stay roughly the same, the new Murano is 2.6 inches wider than its predecessor, and its front and rear tracks have grown by 2.1 inches. That extra stance pairs…

LIKE ODOR-EATERS in workout shoes, a fuse doesn’t call attention to itself until it stops working. These circuit breakers have two states: letting power flow or abruptly interrupting that flow due to a spike in current. To fix your car in the event of the latter, you must first find the fuse itself and then attempt to remove the thing with the often uncooperative small tweezers an automaker provides for such extractions. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Enter the e-fuse. All fuses deal in electricity, but here, the “e” prefix refers to the device’s connected nature. E-fuses, which are placed into a computer chip, function like a mash-up of a fuse and a relay (basically an electrically powered switch) but with way more brains. Because e-fuses react…

HAIRY POINT: HOG PEN This fast right-hander runs down a hill and empties onto the Front Straight. Strike the curbing on the left under braking and then turn in toward the curbing on the right. Get back on the throttle early to get the most out of the long straight that follows. Running wide here could mean mowing a lot of grass. PATIENCE POINT: BITCH The corner at the end of the Back Straight is slow, which usually means you go in too fast. It also goes off-camber as you leave the corner, so be patient with the throttle on corner exit. HAIRY POINT: NASCAR BEND This left looks easy but tests a driver’s mettle and a car’s stability as it demands you to brake deep into the turn-in point.…

HERESY TO SOME, the way forward for others, electric muscle cars are here regardless of whether everyone is ready for them. Case in point: the new Charger Daytona, Dodge’s first EV and the two-door spearhead of a new Charger lineup that the brand hopes will help it navigate the sticky tendrils of its storied past. Later this year, to cover its bases, Dodge will add gas-burning Charger Sixpack models with twin-turbo inline-six power, plus four-door Daytona and Sixpack variants. Not exactly the stuff of legend, but the Daytona’s handsome riff on the iconic ’68 Charger warrants some optimism. Them Duke boys would revel in the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive Scat Pack’s 670 horses and estimated mid-three-second 60-mph time (figure closer to five seconds for the downrated 496-hp R/T trim). They’d also appreciate…

What does it cost to charge the R1T for a year? It’s difficult to calculate precisely how much of a driver’s kilowatt-hours will come cheap and slow (up to 11.5 kilowatts on a Level 2 connection) or expensive and quick (up to 220 kilowatts at a DC fast-charger), but we can approximate the price of both extremes. Using a DC fast-charger to add 200 miles of range, based on our consumption, costs about $66 ($0.55 per kilowatt-hour) and takes roughly an hour. Going, say, 20,000 miles in a year using only DC fast-charging would cost $6620. By contrast, plugging in at home with a Level 2 source takes at least 10 hours to perform the same recharge but sets you back about $20. Under that scenario, the cost to drive…

TO OUR CHAOTIC SHORES the Big Three have randomly imported Eurospec cars. Apart from tear gas, little has more reliably induced regret and schadenfreude. Examples abound: (1) an Opel Astra sold here as a Saturn Astra, (2) an Opel Omega as a Cadillac Catera, (3) a Teutonic Ford Sierra as a 1985 Merkur XR4Ti. Importing the Ford required more balls than are weekly bounced by the Harlem Globetrotters. For starters, no one could pronounce Merkur, including salespeople at about 700 “select” Lincoln-Mercury dealers, many of whom selected to be deselected. Asserted Dearborn: “Merkur is a Greek god; it’s ‘Mercury’ in German; it’s a planet; it’s the element known as quicksilver.” I’m not sure that sales folks right then really needed quicksilver. As marketing disorders go, it was half Snakes on a…

ACCORDING TO BANDIT HEELER (arguably the second-most famous blue heeler to come from Down Under), “Ice cream tastes the best when you’ve earned it.” This sentiment applies to more than just sweets, though. Each year Rolex awards the winners of the 24 Hours of Daytona an Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Day-tona, a timepiece better known by the simpler epithet Daytona. More than just a testament to the feat of winning a 24-hour endurance race, this watch is also among the coolest trophies in all of motorsports. Many of the legends taking to the track at this annual endurance race have the means to afford a $21,400 Daytona—and they may already own one. But the only way to nab a Daytona with “Winner” engraved on its caseback is to take the checkered…

DAY ONE is devoted to getting up to speed and learning the idiosyncrasies of each car. Entering the Climbing Esses—corners that would be accompanied by a 35-mph speed-limit sign on the street—points [see “Treasured Map,” above]. The key to day one is learning how the car and the track interact. DAY TWO starts with an earnest attempt at a lap in the morning when the track is quickest. Nail braking points and clean up lines in the slow, patience-trying corners, such as Left Hook, Oak Tree, and Bitch. DAY THREE starts on fresh tires. After a night spent visualizing the perfect lap, go out and get that fast lap before air temperatures rise. You get, at most, three laps in each car. And it can always rain. One step at…

YOU’D THINK THE SIGHT of a new MG might attract more attention, whether it was spied carving up the winding roads of rural Scotland or whizzing down the back streets of the country’s capital city, Edinburgh. Once one of the United Kingdom’s most successful exports and synonymous with sports car, an MG would turn the heads of every small-town Scot and even a few sheep. As we passed through quaint burghs large and small in our MG4 EV Trophy Extended Range, hardly anyone looked up. Modern MGs are not the Morris Garages cars of old. The Chinese state-owned carmaker Nanjing Automobile purchased the storied brand in 2005 before merging with current owner SAIC Motor (also state controlled) in 2007. Made in China, MGs are now common-place in Europe, having racked…

“MERCEDES-BENZ G580 with EQ Technology” is a mouthful, but that’s the name. Why not G580 E4? That’s more apt, as the G580 has four 145-hp electric motors powering its four wheels. Tally up the numbers, and you get 580 (though the vagaries of rounding and summing four quantities result in an offcial output of 579 horsepower). Those four motors are tucked within a ladder frame that houses the 116.0-kWh battery pack. Like the gas-engine G-class SUVs, the G580 has a front suspension that uses control arms and a rear with a solid axle. Unlike the gas-powered Gs, the electric’s solid axle is a de Dion type with a Watt’s linkage keeping it centered. The G580 can’t quite match the acceleration of the AMG G63, and while we’ve yet to test…

ROOFNEST CONDOR OVERLAND 2 XL ($3945) With plenty of room for two (or four if you’re using alcohol as a lubricant), the Roofnest Condor Overland 2 XL is the most comfy way to sleep in nature we’ve experienced this side of a four-by-four RV. The tent features LED lighting inside and out, but our favorite part was stargazing through its clear vinyl skylight. The 2.0-inch-thick memory-foam mattress was okay for some sleepers, but we suggest a bit more cushion if you’re pushing 200 pounds or more. We mounted our tent to Rivian’s locking cargo crossbars with billet aluminum mounts from Wheel Every Weekend and never needed to retighten the hardware. THUNDERBOLT ADVENTURE SUPPLY OVERLAND KITCHEN ($4225) It took us all of 15 minutes and four bolts to install this finely built kitchen…